HTC Announces Two New Phones, New Sense Experience

HTC held an event in London earlier today where it announced two new phones as well as some improvements to its Sense UI. The two new phones are the HTC Desire HD and the Desire Z. The Desire HD will be available in Europe and Asia later this year. There won't be a US version because we already have the HTC EVO which is nearly identical to the Desire HD, just the European and Asian version. The phone has a 4.3 inch touchscreen and is milled from one solid piece of aluminum so the phone should be pretty sturdy. There won't be a kickstand on it like the EVO but I suppose having a solid piece of aluminum for a phone is plenty for most people. Internally, there is a 1GHz Qualcomm 8255 Snapdragon processor powering it but no mention was made of the amount of RAM or storage. There is an eight megapixel camera on the rear that has a dual-LED flash along with 720p video recording. The sound system on the phone is powered by Dolby Mobile so you should get some pretty good sounding music out of the handset. Data access will come in the form of HSPA+ and 802.11n Wi-Fi.

The HTC Desire Z will be available in Europe and Asia at first with the US following soon after. In the US, the Desire Z will be known as the G2 and will be available through T-Mobile. The Desire Z features a pop-out QWERTY keyboard that uses these "Z" hinges to allow the phone to stay slim and give better access to the keyboard's top row. The keyboard has some customizable buttons and system-wide shortcuts to allow easy access to commonly used functions and apps. Powering the phone will be an 800MHz Qualcomm MSM7230 processor and, if its like the G2, 4GB of ROM and 512MB of RAM. On the back is a five megapixel camera with flash and HD video support. Like the Desire HD, the Desire Z has HSPA+ and 802.11n Wi-Fi access for data. The Desire Z will be running the improved Sense UI though not in the US where it will have stock Android 2.2.

The improved Sense UI will have a new website as the biggest feature. HTCSense.com will have a series of dashboard-connected services for backup, security, and control of your phone. There is a new locate feature that will allow you to make the phone ring, even if its in silent mode, to allow a quicker time of finding it. If your phone is ever lost or stolen, not only can you lock the phone from the website but you can also wipe all its data to keep everything safe. Backups will be automatically handled and will backup your contacts, text messages, customizations, call history, and even data so everything on the phone will be safe. On the phone side there will be new multimedia capabilities to make it easier to capture, share, and upload content, as well as new effects and filters for the camera.